Little Baby Pain-in-the-Ass's One Second of Fame

Is there any question that the yuppie parents of Little Baby Pain-in-the-Ass are right now launching lawsuits against the breakdancer, the city of New York, the Transit Authority, the creators of breakdancing, the maker of the breakdancer's shoes, the maker of the laces, the estate of the inventor of subway platforms, the artist whose music the breakdancer was dancing to, every single onlooker, every single employee of the subway system, all employees of the world's subway systems, the maker of gravity, the parents of the breakdancer for conceiving and raising him, the estate of the creator of concrete, the United States of America, the estates of the Founding Fathers, Youtube, every ISP whose customer viewed the video, the cameraman who took the video, the maker of the camera that captured this video, me for posting it here...?

Because, doubtless in the mindless voids behind the foreheads of Little Baby Pain-in-the-Ass's parents, all of these named and many, many more are to blame for what was filmed here.

Everyone except themselves.

That's the beauty of being a North American -- you're never responsible for anything, least of all for your own actions.

O-ploitation

Oprah Winfrey gives millions of dollars a year to charities. But by god, does she take, as well.

Today I saw her show on which a woman who had been abused for two years by her husband, and a harrowing 51-minute video of this abuse shot by her own thirteen year old son, was the subject of the day. And the show was Oprah at her most sanctimonious and master-of-the-obvious best.

First, it was wonderful of Oprah to maintain a level of normality during this emotionally draining show by keeping the number of commercial interruptions at their usual fever pitch. She wouldn't want her viewers to think domestic abuse was a reality and fear the sky was falling. So, phew, the commercials kept the viewing audience grounded in its superficial, consumerist quicksand.

The subject of the show was a woman named Susan Still. She married a man who revealed himself to be a brute, whose verbal and physical abuse of her was stomach-turning, rage-inducing, humiliating and Oprah-ready. Oprah played lengthy excerpts of the bizarre video Ms. Still's son made of her abuse -- Ms. Still standing, silent, motionless, in the living room while her Neanderthal husband verbally berated her; then footage of her being kicked and stepped on as she lay crying on the bedroom floor.

It was agonizing, sobering stuff.

Midway through the show, breaking for yet another damnable commercial, Oprah trumpeted the next segment -- when her guest's three children were commanded by their father to call their mother a "white slut ho" over and over. Oprah announced this as though it meant Tom Cruise would soon be onstage dancing sock-footed on her couch. All the while, a clearly traumatized Susan Still sat next to Oprah, looking like she expected her ex-husband to come slithering in from offstage. The disconnect between the two women could not have been more ugly or pronounced.

As Oprah gallantly announced at the end of each commercial break that today was the day she wanted the abused among her zombie horde to begin making their plans to escape their abusers, she showed clips of Susan Still's abuse as though they were Hollywood trailers, and then assailed her guest with the most maddening, obvious, condescending questions: "When your kids were calling you a ‘white slut ho,’ how did you feel?" "What did you do?" as though to say, I hope you marched over to that rotten husband of yours and slapped his lousy face!

When Susan Still meekly stated that she had once seen an episode of Oprah dealing with domestic abuse, Oprah took the opportunity to make a joke about Ms. Still's predicament: "I'm surprised you were allowed to watch the show..." (audience laughs). Then Oprah looked at the camera and addressed her abused zombie horde: "Watch Oprah in secret." More laughs from the audience.

There is no doubt today's Oprah may well inspire some battered people to escape their brutish partners. But what a gnawing, ham-handed program one had to sit through in order for that to happen.

Yes, Oprah Winfrey gives much to the world, but goddamn does she take. The type of exploitation she peddles is most sickening because it's done under the guise of "helping." But there is something utterly unwholesome and un-nourishing about all those execrable tampon commercials shoe-horned between glimpses into human misery.

Reparations Refereeing

The New York Times recently published news of "[a]n academic study of the National Basketball Association, whose playoffs continue tonight, suggests that a racial bias found in other parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well." The conclusion was that white referees are more apt to call black players for fouls, than white players.

. . . Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at Penn's Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, said the difference in calls "is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew."

The study, conducted over a 13-season span through 2004, found that the racial makeup of a three-man officiating crew affected calls by up to 4½ percent. More...

After reading this article, I swung into action to correct this wretched injustice being perpetrated against these unwary steroidal millionaires. I have approached NBA commissioner David Stern (and have yet to officially hear back from him, but he will doubtless endorse and take up my ideas) about "refereeing reparations."

The way these reparations will work is -- for the next five years (seasons) no fouls will be called against black NBA players. If a situation arises where one black player appears to foul another black player (according to the racist rules of the game before the reparation seasons), a tribunal made up of delegates from African nations at the U.N. and former black NBA players will render real-time decisions from New York.

Where reparations refereeing really gets down to correcting past injustices is the reevaluation all previous championships. The number of fouls assigned to black players will be brought into balance with the number of fouls attributed to white players. To make amends for the years of wrongs, all fouled black players will be given an additional free-throw. Because it's impossible to travel back in time, their free-throw averages will be used to calculate how many of those additional free-throws they would have made, and all game scores will be adjusted accordingly.

A bank of 300 Rancour 1188 Quintuple Core computers has been working on this job of recalculating the actual scores of these past seasons. Most importantly, all past championships will be awarded to their proper winners (purists might be somewhat put out to find teams assigned championships in years before they formally existed, and other teams being awarded championships after they ceased to exist. If we're going to right a wrong, the purists are just going to have to live with this):

1946–47 Philadelphia

1947–48 Baltimore

1948–49 Minneapolis

1949–50 Minneapolis

1950–51 Rochester

1951–52 Minneapolis

1952–53 Minneapolis

1953–54 Minneapolis

1954–55 Syracuse

1955–56 Philadelphia

1956–57 Detroit

1957–58 St. Louis

1958–59 Detroit

1959–60 Detroit

1960–61 Detroit

1961–62 Detroit

1962–63 Detroit

1963–64 Detroit

1964–65 Detroit

1965–66 Detroit

1966–67 Philadelphia

1967–68 Detroit

1968–69 Detroit

1969–70 New York

1970–71 Milwaukee

1971–72 Baltimore

1972–73 New York

1973–74 Detroit

1974–75 Golden State

1975–76 Detroit

1976–77 Portland

1977–78 Washington

1978–79 Seattle

1979–80 Baltimore

1980–81 Detroit

1981–82 Baltimore

1982–83 Philadelphia

1983–84 Detroit

1984–85 Baltimore

1985–86 Detroit

1986–87 Baltimore

1987–88 Baltimore

1988–89 Detroit

1989–90 Detroit

1990–91 Chicago

1991–92 Chicago

1992–93 Chicago

1993–94 Houston

1994–95 Houston

1995–96 Chicago

1996–97 Chicago

1997–98 Chicago

1998–99 Detroit

1999-2000 Baltimore

2000-01 Baltimore

2001-02 Baltimore

2002-03 Detroit

It's my hope that the NBA will soon sit down with Paul Wolfowitz of the World Bank to begin negotiating the massive transfer of championship bonuses and championship rings to their rightful recipients. We cannot pick and choose who deserves justice in this world. Steroidal millionaires are just as worthy of our sympathy and proactive problem-solving as the residents or refugees of any impoverished nation.

Who is at the wheel?

Imagine you're on a roadtrip with three other people. On the highway, you're sitting in the backseat of the car, reading a magazine. The guy in the front passenger seat is trying to find something good on the radio. The guy sitting next to you in the backseat has dozed off.

While engrossed in your magazine -- maybe a copy of The Realist or The National Daily Conservative Review -- the car you're riding in is involved in a collision: you don't see the details of the accident as they unfold, your senses are simply jarred by the crunch of the fibreglass sheathing the styrafoam bumper; the hood buckling; the awful sudden stop, the sound of breaking glass. And all you know is that you've dropped your magazine, your collarbone is sore where the seatbelt locked against you; there's a cloud of powder from the exploded airbags floating in the car.

Miraculously, no one in your car is hurt.

For the sake of this analogy, let's jump ahead of all the insurance rigermarole, police, and all those inconveniences, to the resumption of your roadtrip: You've got a new rental car and you and your group are ready to hit the highway again. . .

. . . but the guy who was driving when the accident occurred refuses to relinquish the car keys. He insists on continuing to drive.

Before the roadtrip began, you and your car-mates drew straws and the guy who was driving when the accident occurred had been the winner and asserts that this gives him the right to continue.

"But you got us in that accident," one of the other guys says, "so that nullifies you winning the straw-draw."

"Yeah," another guy says, "Whether it was your fault or not, I don't trust you at the wheel."

To which the driver responds, "It's because I was driving when the accident happened that I should continue driving. Had one of you been at the wheel, the accident would have been much worse!"

And here is where we are at with American politics during the long, long run-up to the 2008 presidential election.

We have former NYC mayer, Rudy Giulliani, claiming that because he was at the helm of New York when the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred, that he is somehow more qualified to protect the country than any other candidate. This is the same specious logic that George W. Bush used for the 2004 election. It made no sense then, it makes no sense now, and yet these candidates are not only putting forth this ridiculous argument, some people actually agree with it.

There is no question that America, and the world in general, is much less safe since George W. Bush took hold of the White House in 2000. His wrong-headed war in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, America's consistent flouting of international law, America's lust for torture, are the greatest recruitment tools any enemy of America could hope for to help with rounding up fresh crazies. On a more concrete level, having people in power who stretch the country's military to (and beyond) its breaking point, spread painfully, dangerously thin around the world -- so much so that when America needs its own resources (think: Hurricane Katrina), those resources are missing or sorely lacking -- that strengthens and emboldens "Das Enemy." Pursuing foreign policy goals that make the rest of the free world think the U.S. is crazy is dangerous for America.

I heard Giulliani on the Sean Inanity radio program the other afternoon slinging these un-truisms like an Alabama short-order cook slings hash. And Inanity ate it up, of course.

No, keeping the guy at the wheel who was driving when you crashed in the first place is a bad idea. Talk is cheap, but it's cheap talk that leads to lost lives. Ask those 700,000 dead Iraqi civilians about that.

Oh, right, you can't . . . because they're dead.

Rich Little to perform at the White House Correspondents Association's dinner

It was a year ago that the world beheld the landmark performance of Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. Standing only a few feet from the American Butcher in Chief, Colbert's genius was on full display, ranking in my opinion right up there with Jonthan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and Lenny Bruce's "Christ and Moses." His comments were among the most piercing, hilarious and honest remarks made about BushCo. Later, however, the very media honoring itself that night proved once more its relevance to the public by almost uniformly declaring Colbert's exceedingly funny performance "not funny." Some went so far as to say that Colbert "bombed" -- doubtless an unintentional pun giving W.'s bewildered proximity to the happenings.

The reaction of the press reminds me of a scene from the second season of All in the Family during a flashback to Mike and Gloria's wedding preparations. Bigot Archie Bunker meets Mike's Uncle Kasimir, a huge, strapping man who was once a marine, but became a florist upon returing to civilian life after WWII. Archie does not like Uncle Kas on first sight and says, "Yeah, well we used to think the marines were pretty funny." To which Uncle Kas responds, "Yeah? Well, we used to think the Air Corps. was funny." Archie's face clouds: "I was in the Air Corps. What the hell's funny about the Air Corps.?"

And that was precisely the response of the press to Colbert's brilliant performance. But at least the press was consistent, treating Colbert's remarks with all of the blind-eyed superficiality it has treated the increasingly suspicious 9/11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Short shrift is the new journalistic mantra in North America. Lowering debate to the level of irrelevance is the only function these makers of birdcage liners serve.

Well, old Steve Scully, president of the White house Correspondents Association -- unlike the Bush administration -- refuses to make the same mistake twice. This year he has booked legendary comic Rich Little to perform at the dinner. Scully's first choice for the evening was Bob Hope, but Hope's tour of Hell has been such a raging success, he was simply unavailable for the engagement -- there are more former U.S. presidents on his current tour than on earth.

Rich Little says: "I don't know why I was invited [to perform at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner], perhaps they wanted a different type of comedian this year.... But I did the dinner in 1984 when Reagan was president. I loved him, he was the best audience in the world."

"For Steve Scully of C-Span,. the president of the White house Correspondents Association, this is a game where you can neither win nor lose, no matter what you do. He chose Little this year and had a hand in picking Colbert last year."

"'I picked Rich Little because I think he is funny,' Scully said in an interview..."

And no one knows funny like Steve Scully, voted in his high school year book as Most Likely to Marry a Rubber Chicken. The hilarious part? He actually did!

Fux Spews Obiturates Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

First and foremost, any journalist who works for any arm of Fux Spews has zero journalistic integrity. They enjoy being dictated to by the ideologues running their rancid money-making machine, and are so lacking in character and personal content, that they joyfully spew -- hence the name of the network -- all manner of bullshit, so long as it is contrary to reality and fed to them by King W.'s administration.

Chris Wallace, Brit Hume, Sean Hannity, Geraldo Rivera, Bill O'Reilly -- all industry jokes, bums with wretched reputations, all of whom jumped onto the Fux bandwagon as quickly as contracts and lawyers allowed, all readily identifying themselves as utterly untrustworthy voices.

Ever see the documentary Outfoxed? It shows that the more people view Fux Spews, the less these viewers know about the subjects reported upon. And this week:

Pew Survey Finds Most Aware Americans Watch 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert'-- and Visit Newspaper Sites ... Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly.

So, when hack, ass-licker, soulless chump James Rosen "obiturated" Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., this week, it was done with all the callous, misanthropic bile we have come to know and love from Fux Spews despondents.

It was unequivocally a "good riddance to bad rubbish" obituary -- the sort that every Fux lackey listed above will enjoy upon his demise. Yes, Vonnegut himself at one time described some of his early work as "sci-fi mumbo-jumbo" and quite possibly as the quoted "despondent leftism." But there is no excuse for the mean-spirited final line of this lousy obituary when Rosen quoted Vonnegut as once saying that he hoped upon his death his children wouldn't say of him that he told funny jokes, but was such an unhappy man. "So, I'll say it for them," Rosen droned. Will you, now, Rosen? Only a Fux Spews despondent would presume to speak on behalf of the family of a dead American institution.

What. A. Fucking. Asshole.

But what can one expect from that landfill of a spew network?

I first learned of this hatchet-job obituary on Digg.com where quite a discussion string has grown throughout the day. There are people defending Lackey Rosen and Fux Spews. No, these contemptible phillistines should not be applauded or even tolerated. The only consolation is that since archivists around the world agree that this will be the least remembered era in human history -- our magnetic media is not constructed to last more than a few decades -- that Fux Spews will be recalled with all the force and clarity of the great lost nation of antiquity, Contagia. Ever hear of Contagia and its society of soccer-playing floutists?

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was one of the few famous people I wish I would have personally met. There are many artists whose work means much to me -- Van Morrison, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Neil Young -- whom I have no desire to meet. Hunter S. Thompson was the leader in that category while alive. It was often entertaining reading about his antics, but I never wanted to be within a thousand miles of the man.

It was different with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., whom I always thought of simply as Vonnegut.

Slaughterhouse Five was the first Vonnegut novel I ever read. After the first twenty pages, I thought it was a terrible book. The narrative was nothing more than the author speaking directly to the reader. I was such a stranger to art in my early days that I had no clue that this would, actually, become one of the aspects of Vonnegut's writing that I would most love.

Reading Kurt Vonnegut made me feel better about not knowing what I was doing when attempting my own writing. Vonnegut kept his insecurities in the foreground as his genius powered his work in the background. The second Vonnegut novel I read was Mother Night. Of course my underdeveloped sense of appreciation for subtlety and artfulness was momentarily unimpressed by the book's simplicity. But as the plot unfolded, I remember being knocked out of my chair by the story. When I finished reading the book, I was hooked.

This hasn't kept me from doubting Vonnegut on occasion. I continue to doubt him when trying to get through Hocus Pocus. I doubted him mightly at times in Galapagos and Dead-Eye Dick. As Vonnegut would readily admit: Nobody is perfect -- the writer nor the reader.

On my first visit to Ireland when I was twenty years old, I had limited space among my possessions, but still brought along Vonnegut's collection of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House. The story "Long Walk to Forever" was like a lightning strike inside of me. And the distraction was very welcome, as I gone to Dublin simply to go to Dublin, and within hours of arriving wondered just what the hell I was doing so far away from home. It worked out in the end.

Years later, while living in Ireland, a good friend came to visit. The day before he left, he bought me a book as a gift to say thanks for having him over. Saying thanks to me! I was so gratified having my friend with me for two weeks that I took him out, got drunk and vomited on his shoes. The book my friend bought me was Vonnegut's last novel, Timequake. The novel is not considered one of Vonnegut's best, though it's among my favorites. It's so flawed and Vonnegut was so upfront about its flaws -- mitigating for them with wonderful updates on the actual people who had populated his previous books. There was nothing more heartrending than reading Vonnegut's beloved, revered brother, Bernie, had died at the age of eighty-six. I reread Timequake last year and it has held up marvelously.

I saw Vonnegut when he appeared on The Daily Show last year. It was terrible seeing how feeble and aged Vonnegut had become; how miserably out of breath he was. But he proved the youth and vigor of his ideas, the still-polished-chrome of his humor. He was as relevant that day as when Slaughterhouse Five hit the bestseller lists in 1969.

Last year I read Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, and Slapstick for the first time. I've owned strange little hardback editions of these books for years, found in the early 1990s in a Detroit used bookstore. I had started the novels numerous times, but set them aside for something else. But last year I was determined to give them one final try. All three were wonderful. Vonnegut the short story writer was much more in evidence in the first two novels, both written early in his career. They are very tight and to-the-point. The humor is more subtle in those. By the time of Slapstick Vonnegut was much looser on the page.

In 1992, I did a "directed reading" in the English department of the University of Windsor. I had dropped a creative writing course and wanted to make up the credit. My directed reading centered on Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, Mother Night and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. My professor -- a Vonnegut-esque character in his own right; a sweetly morose poet who watched The Simpsons and flipped through his wife's Victoria's Secret catalog when not perpetrating academics -- really bailed me out consenting to lead my directed reading. At that time in my life I was living with a girlfriend in a rented room in a shitty house. I sat in the dank, foot-smelling living room with my books and photocopies of articles about Vonnegut from The Dictionary of Literary Biography.

While writing my paper on those three novels, I had the distinct impression that Vonnegut would have been embarrassed for me. Vonnegut, himself, only ever read for pleasure. He never sought to prove he understood a book by writing about it. That's just what I was doing. By it was one of the few truly pleasurable assignments of my academic career. So much so that the latent Catholic in me felt a little guilty about the whole thing.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has died and I have yet to read "So it goes" in any of his obituraries. I hope I don't read that anywhere. The loss of Vonnegut is immense. For all of the turmoil and triumph in his life, he is one of the few people I've encountered -- personaly or via their work -- who communicated true values all human beings could live by. He was no preacher, no prosletyzer, he was just very wise and equally humble. One of my favorite quotes of Vonnegut's comes from his novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'"

Don Imus: There's no There There

I've heard the name "Don Imus" here and there over the years, getting himself into the news on the rare occasion by saying something terrible on his radio show. I never found the quotes attributed to him interesting enough to check him out, but during a recent vacation to Florida I watched his radio show (a bizarre concept in and of itself) on MSNBC. What I found was a ridiculous muttering man propped up at a microphone, his drawn face looking like the wax melting from the skull of museum dummy, with an even more ridiculous cowboy hat perched on his head and his beyond-ridiculous moppy hair sticking out from underneath. He carried on a banal repartee with a Paul Schafer wannabe in the studio. The rest of the assorted crew laughed intermittently when nothing funny was said. Then, every once in a while the camera would center on Imus who made an awkward gesture at the viewing audience with a gnarled finger, ushering in a procession of commercials. He does this to let the viewing audience know he hasn't expired utterly at the microphone. He's merely in a functioning coma, not rigor mortis.

What did Imus talk about on his show while I watched? Nothing that I can remember. Being fluent in English, I easily deciphered his affected mumbling; I understood the words that came out of his mouth. They simply did not engage me on any level, either positively or negatively. In fact, Imus was intensely more dull than the commercials that bookended his show.

Years ago, I saw an interview with Don Imus. I forget what the occasion was or who conduted the interviewer. But there sat Don Imus before the camera with a distinct expression of tharn in his muddled gaze -- deer-trapped-in-headlights expression. He muttered one-word answers to the interviewer as though he was from some other culture and had no concept of being asked questions by a stranger while being filmed. He seemed stunned and slow-witted, possibly hungover. At one point, the interviewer asked Imus if there was anyone in the world he loved. It seemed a stupid question, a softball lob that a more thorny and alert personality would have leapt all over. But Imus just stared warily into the camera like a rancher in 1903 regarding a bank manager. He muttered without moving his lips, "Ma-brudder." Don Imus loves his brother. It was a strange, humanizing moment -- a moment in which Imus needed to humanize himself because up until then he seemed like some inflated something that was merely losing air.

So, Don Imus, alleged titan of morning radio, recently uttered racials slurs. In typical Imus form, these comments were of a dull, inelegant nature -- not that there is an elegant way in which a person can reveal himself to be a racist. The words fell from his mouth with the muted thud of turds landing on a tiled floor. "Nappy headed hos" Imus called the girls of the Rutugers womens basketball team. For a man who's made a career out of saying terrible things, this observation of his was not only terrible, but launched at a completely undeserving target. Damn right, Imus should be fired. From what I saw and heard of him, how is it that he's still employed?

Good on Al Sharpton pulling Imus' pants down about this. Unfortunately, given the elaborate slickness -- and laughable pointlessness -- of the televised version of Imus' show there's clearly too much money in the man (how? why? who the hell knows!) for him to be fired. Hence the flaccid slap on the wrist his employer gave him -- a two week suspension. Lying in bed at home or sitting before the microphone in that science fiction radio studio, I don't think Imus will really know the difference. There's no there there. Which makes him a hard target to wring any justice from.

Ah, Good Friday & Crucifixon Hangover

Easter weekend is one of my favorite weekends of the year. I'm blogging right now on my Blackberry from the bright lights of the Philipines. I've come to be crucified -- you know, they have this fantastic tourist-draw in which pilgrims are nailed to actual crosses with actual nails by guys with actual hammers -- and I'm currently waiting in line for my turn. It seemed uncouth to bring a book to read in line (other than the Bible, that is) so I'm covertly blogging. There's enough commotion around me -- hordes of self-flaggelators, rosary-praying pilgrims and, of course, the monstrous screams from the people currently being crucified -- to distract people from noticing me. Truthfully? I can't abide their screams. Either be crucified like a man -- quiet and dignified, like Jesus -- or fuck off and stay home and watch The Song of Bernadette on AMC.

Anyhow, while waiting for my turn under the hammer, I wanted to blog about something I've been thinking about lately:

Global warming and why is it that religious people absolutely refuse to acknowledge such a thing exists? The other day our local weather man was saying as a lead-in to his forecast that there have been other warming periods in the history of the world that were not caused by man. Interesting. I'd like to read more about that. But until then, how can anyone dispute that our factories and cars and all the shit they spew into the air isn't having a negative effect on the world that sustains us? I'm no alarmist and I'm certainly no activist. When I heard the latest about the melting icecaps, I thought, "Well, at least we don't have to worry about them getting so large as to spin the world the wrong way on its axis." I guess that happened millennia ago -- archaeologists have found wooly mammoths under arctic ice with wild flowers undigested in their stomachs, suggesting that the wooly mammoths had gone from a warm climate to a cold one in a very, very short time.

Regarding global warming, my born-again Christian neighbor said to me, "Well, I believe that god has a plan." By that reasoning, I ought to go out and become a heroin addict, shoplift and shoot-up the rest of my life because what's the point in exercising freewill? God has a plan. Like most things my born-again neighbor has said to me, I think this is bullshit.

So, is this the reason global warming can't exist -- even though it's quite apparent that it does? Because god has a plan?

There were a couple of other things that I wanted to air, but my turn has come in line. Have a great Easter! I know that I will.

Crucifixon Hangover
I'm blogging from the Philipines with my Blackberry on voice-recognition mode. It hangs around my neck like Soap on a Rope.

Before coming here, my chiropractor gave me a schematic made from an x-ray of my hands. He marked up the image to show where the nail was to be hammered through me in order not to aggravate my carpal tunnel syndrome. When my turn came to be crucified, I handed the schematic to my hammer-er. The bastard wiped the sweat from his forehead with it, then pounded me onto the cross. I'm no chiropractor, but I think he did less than a delicate job of it.

My first impression upon being crucified -- as my cross and I were raised into an upright position -- was an overwhelming sense of being a piece of furniture. I wished I had brought windchimes to hang off the ends of the crossbeam.

My cross faced the direction opposite to that from which I entered the crucifixion area. And so it was more than a little disheartening to see hotdog and ice cream stands over there. And a souvenir shop called St. Martin's Souvenirs. I'd had lasik eye surgery not long before my overseas trip and I saw quite clearly the Padre Pia placemats and plastic Jesus statues displayed in the front windows. There were candles of every size for sale. Figures of saints and angels were lined up like superheroes, and holy water receptacles with the images of peoples' favorite saints or biblical figures on them.

The sight of all this shit was like an electric charge in the nails piercing my hands and feet.

I thought about how much money I spent on my plane ticket to the Philipines, taxi fare from the airport, the clothes I wore that were ruined with blood stains. And I wondered what kind of long weekend I could have had in Las Vegas for the same amount of money -- and no wounds to slow me down at my keyboard.

As I sit in this train station, dictating on my Blackberry, my hands wrapped in Shroud of Turin dishtowels, I'm beginning to think that this is one of the stupidest vacations I've ever taken. Christ, my hands are so fucked up, I couldn't even unwrap a chocolate egg if any of the unsmiling people around me offered one.

The Doors after Jim Morrison: "Other Voices"

With a personality like Jim Morrison fronting the band, there's little wonder that the intensely brilliant musicianship of Ray Manzarek, John Densmore and Robby Krieger was often eclipsed by his looming figure. Once Morrison was dead, in July 1971, there must have seemed little point in the trio continuing. Luckily, however, they did continue as a band, recording Other Voices and Full Circle.

When I first read about these albums in Danny Sugerman and Jerry Hopkins' biography of Jim Morrison No One Here Gets Out Alive, my first thought was, "Damn, how depressing must that have been, going into the studio with Jim Morrison dead and buried in France?" But hearing both albums, now, my verdict is that I'm thrilled the remaining Doors continued to record. The demise of Morrison (rumors of him having faked his death aside) following the release of the astonishing L.A. Woman LP was the height of anti-climax -- or, maybe just too pat an ending to this real-life story.

By December 1971, The Doors as a trio released Other Voices:


1. "In the Eye of the Sun" – 4:48
2. "Variety Is the Spice of Life" – 2:50
3. "Ships With Sails" – 7:38
4. "Tightrope Ride" – 4:15
5. "Down on the Farm" – 4:15
6. "I'm Horny, I'm Stoned" – 3:55
7. "Wandering Musician" – 6:25
8. "Hang on to Your Life" – 5:36


Without Jim Morrison at the lyric and vocal helm, it's fair for the passing music fan to wonder, "What's the point?" Well, the point is that The Doors, musically, had much life left in them after July 1971.

The first track of the album, "In the Eye of the Sun," is a rock/blues fusion with Ray Manzarek on vocals. Musically, most of the tracks are absolutely amazing in the breath of sonic landscape they cover. Think of the numerous changes of mood and tempo in the song "L.A. Woman," and multiply that by three or five.

The lyrics throughout the album tend toward the crackpot mystical. I didn't detect any outright attempts to imitate Morrison's style; maybe that pseudo-L.A. mysticisim was more a product of the times.

"Variety is the Spice of Life" is sung by Robby Krieger, and sadly, the song is as lame as its title. Regardless of how weak or strong the vocal performances are (and they never rise far beyond weak), Krieger's guitar work mesmerizes. The man seems wonderfully incapable of repeating himself.

"Ships with Sails," musically, is classic Doors. Robby Krieger's guitar is reminiscent of "Love Street," "Blue Monday" and "Indian Summer." There is a stand-up bass played alongside Manzarek's subdued "Riders on the Storm" keyboards, which makes for a wonderfully atmospheric piece.

"Tighrope Ride" is a great little upbeat rock 'n' roll song that might really have turned into something with Jim Morrison at the microphone and handling the lyrics. Still, very much worth hearing. Manzarek, whose vocals are pretty lousy throughout the album, comes as close to singing well on this track.

"Down on the Farm" is another wonderful moody track that adds xylophone to the sonic mix. This is one of the songs that morphs and transitions through an improbable series of sound textures -- from hypnotic, drugged-out L.A. nodding-off in the sunset into jughead country hick twanging, from which the song draws its title.

If you've ever tried downloading rare Doors tracks you might have run into "I'm Horny, I'm Stoned." It's an upbeat sort of throwaway song sung by Robby Krieger. On its own, hearing it for the first time in 2001, I thought it an interesting novelty track that didn't hold anything beyond the first listening. But on this album it's a bit more of a kick.

"Wandering Musician" begins with slow, meditative keyboards that build into something rock steady and quite beautiful. As the track unfolds, Ray Manzarek's genius for invention is on full display. Nowhere on the album do The Doors attempt to recreate the past. These tracks are fresh compositions. Had the tracks been allowed to flourish as instrumentals, it would have been interesting what directions they might have taken not being hemmed in by lyrics.

"Hang on to Your Life" is upbeat, with a livelier performance from John Densmore than anywhere else on the album. Robby Krieger, once more, is in flying form with one fresh, signature Doors lick after another. This is a jazzier song in which each musician has truly shown up to play. Their inventiveness as a trio is painfully evident -- painfully, because the tragedy of The Doors' story is that neither this, nor their next album got much notice before utterly fading away.

There are no odes to Jim Morrison on the album. His absence is a gaping blackhole -- no sense drawing even more attention to that fact. For as blinding and impressive as the musicianship is here, The Doors were really not The Doors without Morrison. Manzarek and Krieger make their attempts on vocals, but I think this album might have been much better had it been conceived as straightahead instrumental. Jim Morrison was an exceptional rock 'n' roll singer and a first-rate writer of rock 'n' roll song lyrics. This album is all about the remaining Doors and the ideas they might have brought into the studio had Morrison arrived from France after the summer of '71, alive, refreshed and ready to follow-up L.A. Woman.

If you're a Jim Morrison fan, you probably won't find anything worthwhile in Other Voices because the album truly lives up to its title. For fans of The Doors' music, this will prove to be a surreal, interesting, and at times, weirdly satisfying journey through the veil of "what might have been." The imagination and talent of Jim Morrison is sorely missing, but to their credit the remaining Doors made no attempt to replace him -- either with a new vocalist or by their own efforts to round things out by writing lyrics of their own and doing vocals.

Music doesn't get much more haunting and interesting than this.

Dorian Gray rises from the dead in Windsor, Ontario

So, the bear-trap of bad luck snapped shut on my play Dorian Gray. The day before it was to be performed at the Capitol Theatre in downtown Windsor, Ontario, the theatre closed; gone bust. The official nuts-and-bolts of the story is more complex than this, but the net effect is the same.

From The Windsor Star: Capitol cancels rest of season

The Capitol’s decision leaves several community groups scrambling to find venues for their events.

Canada South Performing Arts’ production of Dorian Gray, by local writer Matthew St. Amand, was scheduled to open Saturday.

Dispatch from Florida:

A good friend suggested that my next play be a Pinter-esque slapstick comedy about trying to get a play on the stage in Windsor. This is an idea worth pursuing, but not yet. Dorian Gray refuses to die in Windsor, Ontario. A new venue has been found -- Mackenzie Hall (Mackenzie Hall, 3277 Sandwich St., box office: 519-255-7600, tickets $20)-- and the play will be performed Friday March 16th and Sunday March 18th both nights at 8 p.m..

This is the second interruption in the play's schedule. It was first set to be performed in late October 2006, but the production was postponed with slow tickets were cited as the reason. When the Capitol Theatre closed on March 9th 2007, it was, for me, like becoming a widower for the second time. I can't imagine the level of disappointment that was felt among the dedicated and talented cast and crew who had put in so many long hours of planning and preparation. But there we were, a collective groom standing at the marriage altar with a second dead bride.

But there appears to be movement beneath the death shroud covering Dorian Gray. Dorian and his story will not simply fade away.

As Oscar Wilde was personally ensnared by the mores and politics of his day, petty municipial politics in the city of Windsor (recently maligned on national television by none other than Stephen Colbert as "the worst place on earth") have nearly driven a splintered wooden stake into the heart of Dorian Gray. Nearly. But art outpaces bureaucracy every time. The Windsor beancounters have put their crooked thumbprints all over this production and are probably as satisfied with having done that to the extent that their rats' value system can feel satisfaction. But the Windsor artists have prevailed in the more important arena -- their play is going to be performed.

From the play's director, Mark Lefebvre:

Canada South Performing Arts presents

Dorian Gray

by Matthew St. Amand
adapted for the stage from the Oscar Wilde novel

The show is being moved to Mackenzie Hall due to the closure of the Capitol Theatre

New dates are Friday March 16 & Sunday March 18 both at 8 p.m.
Mackenzie Hall, 3277 Sandwich St.
Box office: 519-255-7600
Tickets $20
Limited seating

"SEE THE SHOW THE POWERS THAT BE DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE"

"CURSED? YOU DECIDE"

"THE BASIS OF OPTIMISM IS SHEER TERROR"

"ETERNAL YOUTH COMES WITH A PRICE - $20"

KruftCo

Man of the Year

I was an extra in the Robin Williams film Man of the Year. Here are a couple of screen captures of my performance.

Lost in the Speedlation

It was a mean and dissolute time for me. I was in a depression that would last years and took me months to even realize what psychological succubus enveloped me. To awkwardly quote from The Pogues song "The Sickbed of Cuchulainn" -- "There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head / There's devils on each side of you..." There were self-made devils all around of me at this time, certainly, but the angel at my head was my good friend, Speed. Born of Bavarian parentage, psychologically assembled by James Bond novels, James Brown music and the best of 1970s television viewing, he was a man for all seasons. You know that scene in the John Belushi bio pic, Wired when Bob Woodward is at Belushi's deathbed and Belushi implores him, "Breathe for me, Woodward!"? Speed breathed for me on countless occasions.

There was one of numerous nights we were at the Grad House pub making the landlord rich. A peloton of beer bottles stood on several tables that we had been pulled close together. The labels had been ripped from the bottles and on the white of their reverse sides "Suck My Kiss" had been scrawled in ballpoint pen. Then the labels had been reaffixed to several of the beer bottles. The jukebox had a stack of coins in it to keep it playing for a week, nonstop. The night was bending toward its end -- its end at the Grad House, at least. I found a fly in one of my final rye-and-gingerales.

The night of merriment had done me no good. I was weeks away from graduation and my fear and uncertainty were ascending daily to a blinding zenith.

As we consumed the drinks we had horded following "last call", I stood near some girls I didn't know conspicuously eavesdropping on their conversation. I remember a Lou Reed song played on the jukebox; guys at the pool table finished their final game; people were clearing out of the place and heading into the chill night. The girls standing near me suddenly turned in my direction, looking over my shoulder. Suddenly they smiled and laughed, and even cheered. I wondered if Angel Gabriel stood at my shoulder gesturing toward me, giving the girls the sign they'd been waiting for all night -- "This guy's OK." I turned to see if Angel Gabriel was actually there. He was not. But out of the corner of my eye I caught movement; purposeful, soulful, rhythmic, James Brown movement.

My old friend, Speed, with whom I had begun that night around noon, stood in a small open space between tables, by the front windows of the bar. Although a slow Lou Reed song droned through the Grad House, Speed found a beat in the music I am sure Lou Reed did not even know was there -- and to this mysterious, invisible sub-beat, Speed "busted" and "threw down" a series of moves that ignited the room instantaneously into uproarous shouts, cries and gasps. At one point, as the song wound down, Speed went into a contortion I was sure would send him through the front window. Instead, he spiraled into a prodigious backspin in the most narrow and forbidding of areas, bringing it to an end with an MTV pose of cocky relaxation with a hand beneath his head, his elbow resting on the floor -- looking as though he lay upon a couch watching girl-on-girl porn. The noise in the room coalesced into applause all around.

Speed had once more cast out the evil spirits.

Return of Pryvett

Pryvett, the Alchemist of the Internet. His latest Web find: The Institute of Official Cheer.

Picture Pryvett: 1978, seventeen years old, his chestnut pompadour gleaming with brill. He is clad in jeans and a shirt that looks like the table cloth from the supper table in Little House on The Prairie. Both trousers and shirt conform to the cool of the time, sporting more rivets than the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a time when Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" was on the radio and Robert Redford was starring in the bizarre mainstream movie hit, Electric Cowboy. Rivets somehow = cowboy, and cowboy at that time somehow = cool.

Pryvett was tuned into his culture.

This was the year Pryvett ran for leadership of student government at his high school. Among the multifarious points of his campaign platform, he promised that no more young men from the school would be shipped to Vietnam -- even though no young men from the school had ever been sent to fight in the Vietnam war; and in spite the fact that the Vietnam war had ended three years before, and that Pryvett and his high school were located in the non-Vietnam-war-fighting country of Canada. Pryvett's opponent in the election was a bubbly Doris Day clone who promised, if elected, to bolster school spirit and pride and good feelings. Teach the world to sing.

She was not elected.

Pryvett running for office was the joke. His putting forth a campaign platform was the joke. His speeches -- standing at a microphone before the student body, wiping his sweaty face with a handkerchief like some cut-rate televangelist -- was the joke. But the student body took Pryvett's joke and ran with it. They elected him leader of student government. Everyone outside of the joke -- teachers and school administration -- demanded a recount of the votes. The Doris Day clone cried unabashedly in the principal's office. The aged, fish-faced principal whom the students called "Uncle Pete" consoled her saying, "If there is the least hint of shennigans having occurred in this election, you can bet your bottom dollar that I will make things right! Wrongdoers will pay!"

The recount found the ballots in Pryvett's favor.

A second recount was conducted, which also declared Pryvett the winner of the election.

A third recount occurred, which told the same story the other counts told: Pryvett had been lawfully elected leader of student government.

The message was clear: No more students would be sent over to fight in the defunct Vietnam war in which Canada didn't participate.

As the Doris Day clone was sedated with surgical-grade Thorazine in her pink, stuffed-animal-bedroom by a white-mustachioed country doctor who still made house calls, Pryvett gave his victory speech to the student body.

The school administration may as well have supported the initial ballot count because being leader of student government was difficult for Pryvett. Somehow, the principal, Uncle Pete, treated Pryvett like a confidential informant among the students. Whenever there was vandalism in the school, a mess made in the cafeteria, something off-color printed in the student paper, mass occaions of students cutting classes, Pryvett was immediately called to the principal's office to explain. He was the respresentative of youth culture to Uncle Pete, who was distinctly baffled by the youth in his charge.

"Now, why would someone spray paint 'Eat Shit' on one of the front doors?" Uncle Pete would ask.

Or, "Why would someone mutilate frogs in a biology class and strew their parts through the cafeteria?"

Why did male student refuse to flush urinals?

The weight of such questions were a cross to Uncle Pete. And Pryvett had no answers.

Sometimes an unconfortable silence descended on Pryvett and Uncle Pete in the principal's office. Uncle Pete staring in the air, musing about some unspoken thing. There were moments when a wistful smile clumsily overtook his narrow, mirthless features, and he spoke of his military service in World War Two. "Right and wrong were simpler to decipher at that time. Black and white -- just like the pictures from back then," Uncle Pete said. "There was us and there were the Gerries."

One afternoon, Uncle Pete got carried away reminiscing those simpler times, and told about the time bagpipe music was played over the loudspeaker in the base camp and how he and his brother soldiers were so swept up by a sense of patriotism and the brotherhood-of-soldiers that they began shooting prisoners...

Uncle Pete then seemed to return to himself and he scowled at Pryvett, saying, "Don't you have a class right now?"

"You called me here."

"Well, then, OK. You're dismissed. Keep your eyes open and never stop taking names."

* * *
Uncle Pete and the high school administration were not the only authorities who regarded Pryvett with wary eyes. A few years back a theft occurred at Package Handling Company where Pryvett works as a sorter. PHC had a "zero tolerance" policy about such things. The item lifted from PHC's care was not some family heirloom, not a piece of high technology, nor was it a valuable gem or specialized medical equipment -- all of which would fetch insanely high prices on the black market. No, PHC's recent "heist" involved a DVD: College Girls Gone Wild.

With the item missing/stolen, it's hard to say how PHC knew exactly what had been taken. But PHC has it ways -- it knew exactly what was missing. And knew exactly how to handle the situation.

PHC employs an ex-federal law enforcement officer to conduct internal investigations, and when occasion necessitates, interrogations.

When the College Girls Gone Wild DVD went missing, Pryvett was hauled into a windowless cubby of a room, seated at a table and questioned by the RCMP-trained PHC investigator. The man was trim without the least appearance of being physically fit. He wore tight gray polyester pants and plain white shirt and had an uneven mouse-brown mustachio. There was a forced sharpness to the way he spoke, as though doing an imitation of an impression of James Cagney. His eyes twitched with a rapid blink, like he had his contact lenses in the wrong eyes.

"Those college girls," the blink-twitching investigator said, sitting opposite Pryvett, his feet up on the edge of the table, "they sure are wild." He smiled a "we're all buddies here" smile. "And college girls sure can be hot-to-trot." He sighed. "No doubt about that." He clasped his hands behind his head. "And what red-blooded man wouldn't enjoy watching college girls go wild." He chuckled to himself. "I'm married, but between you, me and the lamp post, I wouldn't mind watching some college girls go crazy. No-sirree-Bob."

Pryvett looked at him, nonplussed. The investigator may have been RCMP trained, but Pryvett had military training. He wasn't some rube sorter virginal in the ways of psy-op interrogation.

The following afternoon, Pryvett was called once more to the windowless room. He sat at the table. When the investigator entered the room a few minutes later, he no longer wore the "we're all buddies here" smile. He closed the door then whirled around and slammed his hand upon the table. "Do you believe in God?" he shouted.

"Yeah," Pryvett said.

"What do you think God thinks of people who steal?"

"That they're thieves," Pryvett ventured.

"Scum," the investigator seethed. "God thinks thieves are scum."

"Then what does He think about murderers?"

"What?" the investigator said, taken aback.

"If thieves are scum, then how do murderers rate? Are they like 'ultra scum'?"

The investigator narrowed his eyes on Pryvett. "What are you trying to say? Are you confessing to something?"

"No, you just said--"

"Only sinners dodge a question about God." The investigator planted both palms on the table and leaned toward Pryvett. "You got any sins you want to confess?"

Pryvett let the moment run on like a silent stammer. Then said, "No."

The investigator gritted his teeth and left the room.

The next day, following morning break, Pryvett was again brought to the windowless room. He sat down at the table. The investigator entered a few minutes later. The blink-twitch in his eyes was more severe that day, somehow signifying he hadn't slept well the night before. There was a DVD case in his hands. He slid it across the table at Pryvett, obviously hoping he would pick it up. Pryvett didn't touch it, though he saw by the cover it was a College Girls Gone Wild video.

"So, you're Mr. Hardass," the investigator spat. "PHC's got me down here in Windsor, away from head office, away from my family, just so I can play games with you. What's your game?"

"You called me here."

"Yeah, well that remains to be seen." The investigator chewed on the end of a pen.

After a moment, Pryvett said, "You know Biff?"

The investigator's twitching eyes widened. "Yeah, well no. I mean, what about him?"

"Before he quit a few days ago, he said that he should steal something."

"Something from PHC? Something -- ? What?"

"Ask him."

Pryvett was sent back to his station and a call was placed to Biff. To the question of "Did you steal a College Girls Gone Wild video from PHC?" Bill replied, "Yeah. So what?" The investigator attempted to threaten the wrath of God upon Biff, but in the end Biff couldn't even be bothered to bring the video back to PHC. The investigator was left to drive to Biff's house to pick up the heist item and the case was closed.

To this day, Pryvett has received no apology from PHC for its false accusations against him.

New Book

A Charlie Brown Christmas

About a week ago I heard a story on NPR about the soundtrack to the 1965 A Charlie Brown Christmas. I'm a longtime fan of the Charlie Brown specials -- lusting after all those Dolly Madison dessert commercials. One thing I never gave much thought to was the music of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which was composed and played by underrated jazz genius, Vince Guaraldi. The fact, alone, that the man composed "Linus and Lucy," the Charlie Brown theme, places him right next to Mozart and Handel in my book.

Yesterday I bought the CD A Charlie Brown Christmas for my wife. Figuring she would get more enjoyment out of it receiving it before Xmas, I gave it to her last night. We listened to it all day today, and I was just floored by the sheer greatness of the music.

I'm no music connoisseur, and can only haphazardly comment on what moves me. The music of Vince Guaraldi moves me immensely. Particularly his rendition of "Little Drummer Boy." Gosh, the production on that gem really grabbed me. Accompanied by childrens' voices singing a soft, Ella Fitzgerald-esque vocal bassline, Guaraldi's piano glides along every poignant nuance of that song -- one that I have always found exceedingly sad for some reason I haven't fathomed in more than thirty years of hearing it. But Guaraldi gave it a light, gorgeous treatment, reimagining that seasonal favorite in quite a stunning way.

It was no surprise to hear in the NPR report that the TV execs of the day were entirely against all the things that ultimately made A Charlie Brown Christmas an unequivocal success at the time, and a classic today. They felt that jazz was entirely misplaced in a childrens' cartoon. And the theme of the program -- that Charlie Brown was down about the commercialism surrounding Xmas -- was completely inappropriate. Somehow, they lost the battle of these creative issues -- and thank Christ for that.

And I could listen to "Linus and Lucy" all day long. Hearing the full version of that track, with Guaraldi flying off into numerous variations on his theme, was the audible equivalent to flipping through an old family photo album.

I'm so pleased that this classic is back in my life. Guaraldi was an amazingly articulate pianist, capturing the fireside coziness of Xmas along with the slight tinge of melancholy that Charlie Brown felt seeing that this holiday is really just another occasion for bearers of arcana -- the nightly news -- to tell us that this year sales were up by one-half of a quarter percentage point over last year's, which makes it the third best holiday in the past seven years...

Forget that. And forget the Muzak monstrocities that assault us this season at the mall. Vince Guaraldi and the magic of Charlie Brown have brought me back to the side of Xmas that envelopes me like a comfortable chair in a favorite room on a day when I have nothing to do but occupy myself with fun memories.

Excommunicate me, please!

Say your parents enrolled you in a group when you were a small child, far too young to make your own decisions. Many people your age were signed up, too -- as though for little league baseball or midget hockey -- and whole groups of you went through the little rites that came when you were seven years of age, nine years of age, thirteen. Then one day when you were old enough to make your own decisions, you leared that the group in which your parents enrolled you was Hitler Youth.

What would you do?

Shrug and say, "Well, that's how I was brought up"? Or would you do what your right mind told you and get yourself the hell out of it?

For more than a decade I have actively sought formal, written excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

In the late 1990's, I wrote a long acerbic letter to my parish denouncing the pedophile priesthood, saying the Catholic Church should be brought before the World Court and the U.N. on charges of being a terrorist organization. I finished off the letter asking that the record of my baptism be stricken from the parish records.

Weeks later I received a tepid note accompanied by my original letter. The wane, dot matrix letter consisted of one line informing me that my baptism had been stricken from the record.

(As the deities would have it, many months later, I inadvertently learned that a friend of my family -- the wife of a famous writer, no less -- worked in that parish office and very likely was the person who responded to my letter. No one but myself made this connection (no one else knowing about my letter), but this may account why her famous author husband acted like I owed him money when I later called him asking for aid locating an agent for my writing.)

Petty, unintentional affronts aside, that pissy, white-tea parish missive wasn't enough for me. I wanted a gold sealed velum denunciation in Gothic script formally excommunicating me from the Church.

So I wrote to the bishop who had confirmed me in the Church when I was thirteen years old. This bishop has a well-documented record of shifting known pedophile priests from parish to parish rather than taking them out of circulation. So I rolled up this knowledge like an old newspaper and whacked the bishop over his funny hat with it. Then, in an attempt to leave no stone unturned, I asked the bish, "What the hell does a guy have to do to get excommunicated from this lousy church? Perform an abortion on the steps of a cathedral on Good Friday while wearing a mask of the pope's face?"

To which the bishop actually emailed a response to me -- proving that the clergy can type with one hand -- that read, "You're a sad, pathetic, angry man. I feel sorry for you!"

And still no Gothic script declaration.

Maybe the bishop can only excommunicate an insane person, and my asking to be excommunicated is the act of a sane man. Therefore...

Movie Watching Weekend

Ventured back into my favorite territory this weekend -- back into heavy movie-watching. Rented a really cool documentary about an all-American weirdo-Brian-Wilson-type-genius titled The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Johnston is a singer/songwriter-visual-artist from Virginia -- now living in Ohio, I believe -- who is a man of many quirks, even more demons, and an ocean of talent. As a youth, he was into making short films filled with his psychotic drawings -- he made a name for himself in high school drawing eyes with all of the accompanying veins and gory attachments everywhere he could find space -- which he scored with his orginal songs.

The first thing that struck me about the movie was that ole Daniel sure knows his way around gorgeous melodies. Tom Waits, Beck, Pearl Jam, and a host of other famous bands have recorded Daniel Johnston songs. Kurt Cobain was often seen (and photographed) wearing Daniel Johnston T-shirts.

Johnston is a brilliant madman who terrified and confused his devout-Christian family. I was immensely impressed seeing the short films he made as a youth. In one, he played himself as well as his mother, doing a brutal parody of a shrew in curlers berating her slow-waking, slow-moving son. Daniel was also mad about tape recording conversations. After a couple of present-day interviews with his sweet, white-haired mother, the audience hears some of the surrepetitious recordings he made of her berating him when he was in his teens. This provides an interesting, quease-making contrast to the June Cleaver reminiscing in her backyard. As one of Daniel's friends rightly points out, these tirades were not unwarranted. Daniel was lazy, he was contrary to everything his family valued. He was an artist among rough-handed tradesmen. He was a thinker and a dreamer among doers.

During one tirade against Daniel, his mother declared him "an unprofitable servant" of God. One of Daniel's friends tells of how Daniel turned this phrase around into declaring himself an "unserviceable prophet," which I thought was really cool.

As Daniel grew out of his teens, he displayed definite signs of mental illness. Even those friends who loved and revered him -- who would defend his most bizarre actions -- agreed that he could be pretty scary and remote at times. There is the story of Daniel running off for months with a carnival; the time he completely lost his marble in New York while his hosts, Sonic Youth, drove all over Gotham in search of him (finally locating him in New Jersey);Daniel beating a friend over the head with a lead pipe; among numerous, numerous hospitalizations.

Through the tumult came an astounding body of work. Daniel now tours internationally playing his music as his artwork tours the world, as well. He does not appear to be in great mental shape these days -- and is in ever worse physical shape; sporting a globe of gut that would set the most proficient beer drinker in awe. But he continues making music, making people nervous, and thrilling audiences. Until this weekend, I'd never heard of Daniel Johnston. Now, I want to hear a whole lot more about him.

Then I checked out the much-talked-about The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. The NPR review I heard weeks ago about the film made it sound like a surreal journey into the moments enveloping a human being after death. In fact, I distinctly recall how the reviewer cautioned the audience not to be put off by the fact that the main characters dies minutes into the film. Well, I must have crossed that review with the wrong film. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a slow-moving, dull, dreary story about an old man with a sore stomach and a sore head and how he encouners unpleasant doctors when he goes to the hospital. There is no surreal, philosophical look at death and dying. This is merely a dull travelogue of Romanian hospitals as Mr. Lazarescu is shuttled from healing house to healing house. An hour and twenty minutes into this drag, I shut the film off.

The film-watching weekend, though, was completely salvaged when I viewed the entire four-film Ju On saga: Ju On: The Grudge, Ju On: The Grudge 2, Ju On: The Curse, Ju On: The Curse 2. The opening of each film informs the viewer: "Ju-on: The curse of one who dies in the grip of powerful rage. It gathers and takes effect in the places that person was alive. Those who encounter it die, and a new curse is born."

This is the film series (the first two of which, at least) that were remade in America as The Grudge and The Grudge 2. I'm sick of Hollywood drek, so I watched the originals in subtitled Japanese. And goddamn, the Japanese sure know what is scary.

The four film saga is episodic, following a number of characters and their interaction with the house where the Grudge resides. Anyone who doubts that horror can exist in modern life beyond insane, stalking murderers should see these films. One of the most interesting aspects of Japanese horror is how it infiltrates technology. There are cellphone calls from the dead. TV programs are highjacked by spirits. Lights are subject to otherworldly currents. And the Japanese versions of these films do not shy away from showing us the monsters.

There is one nerve-twisting scene (in Ju On, the first of the series) when a woman is in an office building rest room. Slow moving, scraping footsteps pass by her stall, and her cellphone malevolently malfunctions. She hurries out of her stall and is confronted by a humanoid monster; a woman in a white gown who stands with her head severely downcast, her long black hair obscuring her face. The main character escapes to the building's security office. There, a male security guard tells her to sit tight while he goes down to investigate. The woman watches on a closed-circuit TV screen as the security guard walks to the door of the rest room, and stops. The monster, now taking the form of black smoke, moves out the door and envelopes and kills him. Then the black smoke floats up with excrutiating slowness to the security camera, filling its lense with blackness -- from which a pair of eyes suddenly emerge. The effect is absolutely horrifying.

Ju On: The Grudge 2 has a very slow start, but once the film hits its stride -- about thirty or forty minutes in -- the story and tension are unrelenting. The story centers on the dreaded house where the original Grudge manifested, looking at its unhappy history with characters reliving various terrifying moments. This is carried through quite effectively in Ju On: The Curse and Ju On: The Curse 2. It must be said that Ju On: The Curse 2 has a fantastic, understated, yet thoroughly creepy ending. None of these films are sequels like the Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street franchises. The Ju On sequels genuinely further a story that is definitely worth telling.

The recurring images in the films -- the ghostly, gray-bodied boy who screeches like a cat; the broken-bodied woman who crawls down stairs and through halls like a serpent; the innocents whose faces contort in wild renditions of terror -- continue to haunt well after the credit have rolled and the music has silenced.

I've never been much of a fan of horror films, but I cannot deny relishing Japanese horror movies, like Shikoku, The Eye. The Eye 2, The Ring, Premonition, and others. These are the perfect antidotes for the formulaic drivel Hollywood spews year after year.

My First Firsthand Experience with Crucifixion

I have never been handy with a hammer or any other sort of tool -- other than a keyboard. When I was a kid, though, I did enjoy going into my father's cluttered, chaotic workshop and randomly hammering nails into wood. There was a day when I was about eight or nine years old when I nailed two pieces of wood together. They formed a cross like the one in church that had the bronze statue of the tortured Jesus hanging from it. This was way back in the days before I realized god couldn't pass the Turing Test.

As I looked at the cross I held in my hand, I slowly turned my gaze through the open workshop door, which led into the part of the basement where my brother and I played. There on the floor, face down, lay my rubber Spiderman action figure. A weird sort of inspriation took over and the next think I knew I had nailed Spiderman to the cross I had made. He fit perfectly; his pose -- arms stretched out, feet together, as though leaping -- was crucifixion-ready.

I can't remember if I went and showed my dad what I had done or if he had come into the workshop about then. My dad was principal of a Catholic elementary school, who had been educated by the Basilian priests at the Catholic secondary school I would attend years later. He had spent a year in the seminary when he was eighteen years old. When he saw my handiwork, his face took on a strange shocked/appalled expression, and he said, "Son, take Spiderman down from the cross."